Drop Off Reef Tank

[lastlight]

If he wants a rock face to the drop-off I'm not sure how you'd make such an area accessible. The idea personally scares me but if nothing went wrong you'd have an amazing hidden bio-filter and a nice dispersed flow coming through the rock face. Standard egg-crate would not be protective enough as firefish, gobies, blennies etc would all make it thru.

[Gripenfelter]

Nice idea but not seeing that as do-able. Too many variables for trying to keep fish out of that area. Plus doing water changes for 360 gallons...ugh. I'd rather seal off that area. But then reinforcing it means the shelf would have to be able to hold 1000 lbs.

[ScubaSteve]

I've always wanted to do the triple biotope design. I like Steve's ideas to make the under-shelf area a pod heaven. You could do a NPS section at the bottom of the reef wall and do a quad biotope of there were enough pods.

That being said I am also one for a challenge and believe in tackling a project to achieve the design and aesthetic you want. I agree that building the tank on-site would be the better way to go. I don't know how much free time you have or how willing you are to be innovative but I'd say just take a crack at it and stress test it to see how it holds up. I don't think you'd be blowing the glass, only the seams, so you could use use the glass if something happened. If you found some cheap glass somewhere you could try a few designs and if the seams blew, you could try again until you found something that works ( do this in the garage or yard of course). I've used thick acrylic before for joints that take a lot of stress... Not for tanks but the idea is the same. I built some equipment at work that uses 3/4" acrylic bonded to 1/2" to get a big, fat seam. It has taken 1.5 tons dropping on it almost daily for over year with no cracks or leaks. You'd only need to do this for the critical seams.

[mark]

Originally Posted by Gripenfelter

Type of tank I've always thought was interesting was the beach/water for mud-skippers. With your layout, mud-skippers and a reef.

Thinking about the Aquagiant tanks and their curves corners, wonder what a custom from them would cost.

[Gripenfelter]

For an L-shaped tank I got two quotes.

$6600 in acrylic.
$3200 in glass.

If I have someone build me one. Also no warranty lol.

Gonna weld up a steel stand myself out of 2" square tubing and cover in plywood. Then I'll look at building the tank myself lol.

[MarkoD]

just get a deep tank. make a cliff where you want a drop off one one side and fill the rest with sand and rock or cement.

then cover the filled in area with paneling thats part of the stand

[MarkoD]

i was thinking of doing this by making a syrofoam base painted with drylok

back in my freshwater days, i use to make styrofoam 3d backgrounds..... so why not do the same thing to raise the floor on a section of the tank?

like this

[sphelps]

I'm going to agree with most and say build a standard tank, install a baffle like you would in a sump and then fill the one portion with base rock and use your stand to conceal that section. It will cost less to build it this way plus it'll be stronger and nobody will know the difference if you built the stand right.

[phi delt reefer]

Definitely not a diy tank project unless u work with glass or acrylic regularly.

Troy lee on reef2reef had one. Check out his build thread for he did have some learnings to share with anyone else trying the same thing.

Acrylic would be the best option for it doesn't share a weak point like glass would.

That stand will need to be perfect as well for it'll be easy to create pressure points if it's not perfect.

Go pro on a build like this or get some like a marine land deep dimensions standard tank and do what others mentioned above.

[Gripenfelter]

So my wife is semi-onboard with the new tank idea.

But she likes large angels like the moorish idol, emperor angels, triggers, etc. So here is the NEW DESIGN.



One side will be reef safe livestock. The other side will be sharks, rays, large angels, etc.

Yes it will be over 300 gallons now lol.

Feel free to critique.